Last Friday the OSI Board held a special meeting to fill vacancies that had arisen by the departure of three directors - Mike Godwin, Andrew Oliver and Michael Tiemann. Michael Tiemann left the Board after serving as OSI President for many years and leaves a large gap which the board will only fill thoughtfully; as a consequence, Martin Michlmayr, currently OSI Secretary, was temporarily appointed Acting President and the election of a full new President scheduled for a later meeting of the new Board. The Board warmly thanks all three for the contribution they have made to OSI.

The researchers designed the structure of the nanorobots using open-source software, called Cadnano, developed by one of the authors — Shawn Douglas, a biophysicist at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. They then built the bots using DNA origami. The barrel-shaped devices, each about 35 nanometres in diameter, contain 12 sites on the inside for attaching payload molecules and two positions on the outside for attaching aptamers, short nucleotide strands with special sequences for recognizing molecules on the target cell. The aptamers act as clasps: once both have found their target, they spring open the device to release the payload.

OSI is changing, and you can help! I spoke at FOSDEM in Brussels on Saturday, on behalf of the Open Source Initiative
(OSI) where I serve as a director. My noon keynote covered a little of
the rationale behind OSI and a quick synopsis of its last decade from my own perspective and then
announcements on OSI's behalf about the work we’re doing to make OSI strong and relevant
for a new decade.

The Open Source Initiative is switching to a member-led governance. For that, it will need members.

The OSI Board would be very grateful if you would complete the totally anonymous survey which will help us understand what attributes you would like from OSI membership in the future. Thanks for your help!

This bill requires state agencies to consider open source software when acquiring software and promotes the use of open data formats by state agencies. This bill also directs the commissioner of information technology to develop a statewide information policy based on principles of open government data.

In preparation for my keynote at FOSDEM, I was interviewed by the team who have just posted the interview. In particular, I noted this background to the governance reform, which readers here might find useful:

As courses, certificates, and curricula are created, it's valuable to bring together people who are working to develop and deliver this material into a community where we can jointly define a central body of knowledge related to free, libre, and open source software. That goal has led me to take the first step toward creating this body of knowledge, termed FLOSSBOK. The initial outline, intentionally very brief, can be found on our FLOSS Competency Center site.